“Pastor, what is the difference between praying in tongues and praying in the spirit?”

So yesterday I began my teaching by telling you the difference between living in the spirit and being filled with the Spirit. Once you receive Jesus as Lord and Saviour, the Holy Spirit comes inside of you and activates your spirit. This is necessary because God is a Spirit, and those who worship Him can only worship Him in the spirit, not in the body. We glorify God with our body, but worship and connectivity to Him can only be done through our spirit.

One of the mysteries that has confused many believers for so long is the possibility of having a spirit being inside us, yet if you open or dissect our body, you won’t find a spirit. Well, this is simply because our spirit can only be located inside the Holy Spirit. In other words, you can’t be alive in the spirit without the Holy Spirit. And you can’t receive the Holy Spirit except you receive Jesus as Lord and Saviour. Once you receive Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes into you and activates your spirit.

Once you receive Jesus, you’ve become a person who lives in the spirit. In other words, you can now communicate with your heavenly Father who is a Spirit.

But being filled with the Spirit or the Holy Spirit is entirely different from the encounter you had with the Holy Spirit at the point of salvation. Being filled with the Spirit in literal terms means to be equipped with the power of God. I believe this is why Jesus told the disciples that they would receive power after the Holy Ghost comes upon them. It was Apostle Paul who began to teach us the different dimensions, workings or gift of the Holy Spirit, of which one of them is the gift of diverse kinds of tongues.

I also mentioned yesterday that one of the signs that show when a person is filled with the Spirit is that he’d speak with tongues. There are 3 instances where this happened in the Bible, and so we can consider it a doctrine or a pattern. It is therefore possible to be living in the spirit but not be filled with the Spirit of God. You live in the spirit because the Holy Spirit activated your spirit at the point of salvation, but you get empowered by God to witness Jesus to the world when you are filled with the Spirit.

Let me also mention at this point that speaking in tongues are in two categories; there is speaking in tongues as a sign of being filled with the Spirit (please refer to yesterday’s article), and there is speaking in tongues as a gift of the Holy Spirit. A person who has the gift of diversities of tongues communicates the mind of God in encoded languages that only a person who has the gift of interpretation of tongues can interpret. Remember that it is a gift, which means it was given for the edification of the body of Christ. So whatever is delivered through tongues would mostly be for instruction or direction. On the other hand, praying in tongues as a result of being filled with the Spirit is a prayer to God assisted by the Holy Spirit. And if it is assisted by the Holy Spirit, then it means you’d only be led to pray the will of God at that time.

What happened on the day of Pentecost was phenomenal, they spoke in tongues after they were filled. Coincidentally, the people around heard what they were saying in their local languages. And all they heard was about the good works of God. Now this doesn’t mean that you’d be able to hear me each time I pray in tongues as a result of being filled, it just means that the Holy Spirit does the prayer according to God’s will. And God’s will at that moment was that the people around would hear of the good works of God. If you’d recall, the tongues that Cornelius and the other disciples that Apostle Paul prayed for were never interpreted. So while one dimension of speaking in tongues will require interpretation to disclose the encoded message of the Spirit to the church or a person, the other dimension is prayer to God according to the will of God. And if the will of God is that you or someone else hears what you’re praying, then that’s exactly what will happen.

If you understand what I’ve shared so far, then you’d understand the difference between praying in the spirit and praying with the spirit or in tongues. But let me show you a few scriptures:

1 Corinthians 14:15 (NKJV)
What is the conclusion then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will also pray with the understanding. I will sing with the spirit, and I will also sing with the understanding.

This was part of Apostle Paul’s discussion on speaking in tongues. He was comparing the act of speaking in an unknown language (unknown to those listening and speaking) and of speaking in a language that the listeners and speaker knew. Apostle Paul used the term to speak or pray in tongues to distinguish it from speaking or praying from the mind or a language you know. Therefore, when a person who is filled with the Spirit begins to speak in tongues, his mind does not know the language or what is being said.

Ephesians 6:18 (NKJV)
Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints?

Jude 20 (NKJV)
But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.

These two scriptures refer to something very different from 1 Corinthians 14:15. Many Bibles use a convention when referring to God. You will notice the capital “G” when the Bible text is referring to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The same convention is used here with respect to the Holy Spirit or the Spirit. The capital “S” means that it is referring to the Holy Spirit and not the spirit of man.

So while praying with tongues engages the influence or gift of the Holy Spirit to pray, praying in the Spirit relies on the person of the Holy Spirit to have an effective prayer time. Praying in the Spirit means to pray with a dependency on the Holy Spirit to help you with your prayer and be consistent with God’s kingdom and principles. It refers to a prayer that is from one’s spirit, as opposed to mere words from the mind, and it relies on the Holy Spirit to help you in the prayer.

As I conclude, whether you are praying in tongues or in the Spirit (Holy Spirit), true prayer is one that comes from within one’s inner being, which is our spirit. True prayer is more than words put together in the mind and spoken. Although praying in tongues is a special and advantageous case of praying in the Spirit – considering all that has been said, every born again believer should practice praying in the Spirit as Apostle Paul admonishes. You don’t need a special influence to pray in the Spirit, you just need salvation.

I hope this has brought enlightenment to someone.

Remain ever blessed, in Jesus precious name!

#EmekaAnslem